AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

Gather Round the Tables

You don't know the meaning of the word tedious unless you've tried to create a column-and-row data table in older versions of AutoCAD using the LINE and TEXT commands. AutoCAD's table object and the TABLESTYLE and TABLE commands for creating it make the job almost fun.

Table objects in AutoCAD 2012 are not annotative, so you have just two methods of adding them to drawings: You can create them in model space, scaling them up by the drawing scale factor (see Chapter 4 for a refresher), or — and this seems more sensible to me — you can create them in a layout, in paper space, defining them by their actual plotted (paper) dimensions.

Tables have style, too

You control the appearance of tables — both the text and the gridlines — with table styles (just as you control the appearance of standalone text with text styles). Use the TABLESTYLE command to create and modify table styles. Follow these steps to create a table:

1. On the Home tab, click the Annotation panel's label to open its slideout and then choose Table Style.

   The Table Style dialog box appears.

2. In the Styles list, select the existing table style whose settings you want to use as the starting point for the settings of your new style.

   For example, select the default table style named Standard.

3. Click the ...